You're somewhere in the fairway. Could be 150, could be 165. Your buddy has the only rangefinder in the group and is taking their sweet time with it. Meanwhile the app you're already scoring on has been sitting in your pocket knowing the exact number the whole time.

Not anymore. GPS yardages are now built into live scoring on Buddies on the Green. One tap. Three numbers. A satellite view of the hole. And a map that tells you which club to pull based on your distances, not some tour pro's. Let's go.

One tap, three numbers

During a round, look just under the hole selector for the Hole Tools row. Tap the GPS chip and the yardage panel opens right there on the scoring page:

• Front of the green
• Middle of the green (the one most of us actually want)
• Back of the green

Under the numbers you'll see a club read-out pulled from your bag, plus a little Map tile. Tap that and the full-screen hole view opens, tee at the bottom, green at the top, whichever direction the hole really runs. That's where the fun stuff lives.

No passing the phone around. No separate gadget. Just the app you're already keeping score in.

Wait, why doesn't it match the scorecard?

Good eye. A scorecard yardage is measured along the fairway, around the dogleg if there is one. GPS measures from where you're standing straight to the green. On a bent hole the two numbers will disagree, and both are right.

The distances follow the curve of the earth, not a flat map, so what you see is what you've actually got left. Stand on the tee and you'll see the tee-shot numbers. Walk to your ball and numbers walk with you.

Tap the map, plan the shot 🎯

This is where GPS turns from "nice to know" into "okay, this is useful." Open the full-screen map and tap anywhere to drop a target. The panel flips to answer one question how far is that spot, and what's left to the green after it?

Tap a second point and you've got a route. Lay-up here, approach from there. It reads like a plan instead of a guess, which on a reachable par 5 is the difference between birdie look and a lost ball.

While a target is up, the club read-out measures to the target, not the green. Because standing 188 out from your lay-up spot, it's no help being told which club reaches the middle yards away.

Pinch to zoom. Drag to pan. Hit Reset to get the whole hole back and clear your targets. The markers and lines stay the same size on screen as you zoom in, so the imager gets bigger and the annotations stay readable.

Your bag, drawn on the hole

If you've entered distances in My Bag, this is your moment. Open the Layers menu on the full-screen map and make sure My distances is on. The map draws three arcs over the hole: the club it suggests, plus the next one longer and the next one shorter.

Three, not fourteen. A full fan of every club in the bag is a diagram. Three arcs is an answer.

The read-out is refreshingly honest, too. Distances show with a tilde, like 7i · ~180, because your "180-yard 7 iron" is a typical number, not a promise. Gaps are spelled out in pla English: "leaves 7yds short", "leaves 1yd long", or "about right" when the difference is smaller than your bag can do anything about. No fake precision.

Haven't filled in a club's distance? It simply doesn't show up. The map won't quote you a g your bag can't act on.

Front, middle, back. Tap to measure. Your clubs on the map. That's the whole pitch.

Scout a course before you play it

Playing somewhere new this weekend? Head to the course's details page and look for the Course Preview button. It opens the same hole maps with next and previous hole navigation, no round required. Flip through all 18, drop a couple of targets, figure out where trouble is before you're standing in it.

Preview measures from the back tee since you aren't standing anywhere yet. The button only appears on courses that have map data.

See where your buddies are 📍

Here's a fun one. Flip on Share position during a round and your location shows up as a live dot on the hole map for everyone else in the group. Theirs shows up for you. Watching a round from the clubhouse? Spectators get the yardage panel and the hole map too, so can follow along and see exactly who's still on the tee.

A few things we were careful about:

• It's off by default. Nobody sees your location until you say so.
• You turn it on for that round, not forever. The next round starts fresh.
• You can turn it off any time mid-round and the sharing stops on the spot.

When someone in your round is sharing, a small blue dot with their first name appears on the GPS chip, so you know there's something worth looking at before you even open the map.

The honest bits

We'd rather tell you this now than have you find out on a par 3 with water in front.

Greens are reliable. Hazards are shown only where we've checked them by hand. Our mapping provider's green coordinates are excellent. Its hazard data is not. On one course checked against the ground, a hole with three bunkers and a lake came back with nothing at all. An empty hazard list would read as "nothing there" when the truth is "we don't know," so we show hazards only on courses someone has verified. Trust the yardages. Never assume a missing bunker means there isn't one.

Battery. Location tracking runs only while the GPS panel is open. Close it it stops. Your phone will make it to the 19th hole.

Coverage. Every course has to be checked before it gets a map, because a wrong match doesn't show an error, it shows a perfectly believable map with every hole a nine off. Right now we've got 60+ Colorado courses mapped, and the list is growing. If your home course isn't on it yet, tell support and we'll get it in the queue.

It's a Premium feature. GPS lives inside live scoring, and live scoring is part of Premium. That includes your free trial, so you can take it out for a spin before spending a dime.

How to try it this weekend

1. Open My Bag and enter typical distances for the clubs you trust. Even four or five is enough to make the arcs useful.
2. Set up a round on a course with GPS. If the GPS chip shows up in the Hole Tools row, you're good.
3. Tap the chip on the first tee. Check your numbers. Tap the Map tile and drop a target where you want your drive to finish.
4. Pull the club it suggests. Or don't, and tell us why in the comments. We can take it.

Want the full walkthrough, including what every number means and why a course might not show the GPS chip? It's all in the GPS Yardages help guide.

Know your number. Then go hit it.

Nothing about GPS makes you swing better. What it does is take one decision off your plate every shot, so you can get on with the part that matters: giving your buddies a hard time about the one they just chunked.

Not on Premium yet? Every new account gets a 30-day free trial with no credit card required. Start your trial, open a round, and tap GPS. Your rangefinder buddy is going to be very quiet on the next tee. ⛳